BOSTON — If you worked hard, bought a home, speak English, and live in a quiet neighborhood — congratulations. You’re officially not a priority in Mayor Michelle Wu’s Boston.

That’s the takeaway from the Wu administration’s new 69 page “Anti-Displacement Action Plan,” which introduces a scoring system to decide who gets housing help and where the city should focus its efforts. Spoiler: it’s not on you.

Buried in the plan is a city-developed “Displacement Risk Map,” which flags neighborhoods by race, language, income, education level, and homeownership rates. Areas that are, in the city’s own words, “more white, more English-speaking” and filled with homeowners are marked “low risk” — and thus less deserving of city support.

Low-risk block groups are mainly concentrated in Charlestown, Downtown, North End, Seaport, West End, and West Roxbury. They tend to be whiter, and have higher proportions of college-educated, homeowning, and native English speaking residents.

— City of Boston Anti-Displacement Action Plan, 2025

In other words, if your neighborhood is too stable, speaks the wrong language, or just has too many people who finished college — don’t expect much from City Hall.

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How does this risk map actually work?

It doesn’t just sit on a shelf. The city uses it to decide:

• Where to advertise housing lotteries
• Who gets first-time homebuyer support
• Which landlords to “engage” for eviction prevention
• Which neighborhoods get rezoned or preserved
• What developers are told to build — and for whom
• Where climate dollars go
• Who gets public land for “below market” shops
• How the city negotiates over state-owned real estate

So if you live in a “low risk” area, you’re automatically deprioritized for just about all of it. Because — according to Wu’s team — you’re doing too well to need help.

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A Friendly Hand for “Community Developers”

The plan also nods to a growing role for so-called “community-driven developers” — smaller or nonprofit-aligned builders that work closely with local groups and neighborhood coalitions.

In theory, it’s about empowering locals. In practice, it gives the city broad discretion to pick which groups get access to public land, funding pipelines, and project approvals — and which ones don’t.

If you’re politically plugged in, speak the right lingo, and show up to all the “equity” workshops, there may be opportunities here. For everyone else, it’s not as clear.

Taxpayer resources — land, subsidies, and city planning muscle — are now being steered toward “culturally-aligned” housing models. The plan doesn’t say who decides what that means. But you can bet it’s someone with friends at City Hall.

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And now, “Affirmative Cultural Zoning”

The plan also throws in a new phrase that sounds like it was invented at a graduate student mixer: Affirmative Cultural Zoning.

It’s not defined. But it implies that the city may now guide development based on the cultural identity of a neighborhood — and suggest how to preserve or change it accordingly.

No clear rules, no criteria, no explanation. Just another vague layer of planning power that lets bureaucrats tell you what “belongs” in your neighborhood.

Fun.

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Who’s Left Behind

Wu’s office would say this is about helping the vulnerable. But in reality, the city’s formula quietly deprioritizes neighborhoods with too much stability — places with high homeownership, English speakers, and families who’ve worked their way up over time.

There’s no law saying you can’t get help. But if you’re a young couple scraping for your first home, or a lifelong resident just trying to stay in your neighborhood, and you happen to live somewhere “too successful”? You’re out of luck.

Boston isn’t just building housing policy. It’s building a hierarchy — where the people who stuck around, saved up, and played by the rules are now told they’re doing too well to matter.

They call it data-driven policy. We call it forgetting the people who made Boston work.

🔗 Wu's new Anti-Displacement Action Plan can be found here: https://www.boston.gov/departments/planning-advisory-council/anti-displacement-action-plan